Right about now, I'm pulling out what little of my hair is left.

Seems like sometimes Ubuntu gets the configuration for my network card
correct, and other times it doesn't. So when I boot the computer,
it's anyones guess.

Sometimes if I power everything down, including the router and the
cable modem, it helps. Other times not.

I would suspect flaky hardware, except that the computer has Win Vista
64 on the other drive and it works flawlessly, every time.

Computer is an HP Pavillion m8430f, and it is about a month old.

Any ideas?